It started when I was a kid. Probably 1971 or 1972. I was in the toy section of Lowen's in Bethesda. For anyone growing up in southern Montgomery County in the 60s and 70s, Lowen's was Mecca for toys. The place had every toy a kid would ever want.
The store had a glass case with toy figures made of painted plastic with metal bases to keep them upright, a line by Britains toy soldiers called Deetail. They were about 2 inches tall or 1/35 scale. Cowboys and Indians. Knights on horses. Arabs and Foreign Legion. Union and Confederate soldiers with cavalry and cannons. World War II soldiers with vehicles. What caught my eye at the time were the German soldiers and American soldiers from World War II.
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| German WWII Soldiers |
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| American WWII Soldiers |
I loved the devastated trees that came with the package so a couple soldiers could have "cover."
My friends liked cars and motorcycles, so they also caught our eye too. I got a couple of them.
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| Motorcyclists, American on left, German on left. |
I liked going out on a little power boat my family had near the Chesapeake Bay, so this little patrol boat caught my eye too. I remember giggling at the boat number (#73). In the 60s and 70s, you could watch reruns of a TV comedy called McHale's Navy, featuring tales of an American PT Boat in the South Pacific in World War II. The boat's number was 73. The cast of the show included in an early role of comedy legend Tim Conway. I wondered if the boat number was an inside joke among British toy designers.
They even sold little guns that could shoot (a no-no today, for fear kids would eat the projectiles or poke their eyes out).
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| German mortar on left, American recoilless rifle on right |
I eventually accumulated the figures above over repeated trips and parent begging sessions on Saturday mornings. They were rather exotic compared to my regular toy soldiers that were unpainted, sorta cheap. After I graduated from playing with toy soldiers to playing with girls (in my head at age 15; in reality, a good bit later), the soldiers were stored away, forgotten. My folks moved out of the house I grew up in and much of my childhood trove of toys melted in a fire where they were stored away.
Fast forward thirty years. Clearing out my folk's condo after they moved into assisted living, I found a box of toy soldiers that survived, including those pictured above. At first I tried to sell some of them, as what does a guy in DC need with boxes of toy soldiers. I looked them up on ebay and found similar soldiers, British and Japanese Armies from WWII and American Civil War Union troops. Well, instead of selling the soldiers I had, I bought more. (I also found Confederate troops, but I didn't want a bunch of traitors in my house, just like I don't want statues of them on my public spaces).
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| Civil War Union soldiers |
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| WWII British soldiers |
Britains is a worldwide brand, so it was inevitable that some companies would make knock offs. The figures below were knockoffs of the British and Japanese figures. I found them in a drug store toy aisle in the early seventies. I probably kept them with the Britain's soldiers because they were the same size. After I bought the Britain's WWII British Army figures, I realized they were copies of the Britains figures. Though I don't have Britain's Japanese figures, the Japanese figures were knockoffs of them as well.
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| Knock off soldiers, Japanese (left) and British (right) |
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| Knock off soldiers with their inspiration |
I even saw a cool machine gun from the British 8th Army in Egypt on eBay as well as a British mortar like the German one above.
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| 8th Army Vickers machine gun, Mortar |
One of the stranger vehicles of the Second World War was the Kettenkrad, a cross between a half-track and a motorcycle. Britains made one of them as well, and I picked one up on eBay.
I was and am living a couple blocks from the Marine Barracks in SE DC, where on Friday nights in summer the Marines put on a evening parade with marching companies of troops and bands. On other evenings as the sun sets, if it's quiet, you can hear a lone bugler play The Last Post. Seeing them got me interested in the figures of marine bandsmen and I bought a small assortment of plastic bandsmen on ebay for a few dollars.
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| Marine Band figures. |
I thought I'd buy a couple more. I bid on a nicely priced set but lost out and, in frustration, bought a full set of metal drum and bugle figures for more than a few dollars.
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US Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, like the ensemble that rehearses near our house.
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I wanted to eventually fill out the set of the regular plastic bandsmen. I also found US Army Band figures representing a strange brief time in the 1950s when the Army Band wanted a distinctive uniform like the red marine uniforms. They chose a golden yellow for the uniforms, but they didn't go over well--they were nicknamed Lion Tamers--so the Army switched went over to subtle dark blue uniforms pretty quickly. My guess is Britains found it could use the same molds as the Marine set and produced the Army band sets. I found an assortment of both Army and Marine bandsmen, some broken, at a very decent price and fixed them up. These were made of a more brittle plastic in the 60s and 70s that does not age well. I put them all together in a small curio box I found on the street. The title page of this blog is a shot of some of these guys.
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| US Marine Fleet Band and Color Guard |
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| US Marine Fleet Band and marching marines. |
I said I was finally done. But when searching for bandsmen figures on ebay, I kept running across figures of British military musicians. They looked cool too. So I got some. And then some more. And yet more.
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| British Guards Regiments Band |
Sometimes the individual bandsmen were sold in lots with regular soldiers in dress uniform. So I accumulated some of them too. Apart from those above I have some more of them as well as US Marine Band figures that I found on ebay for next to nothing, mostly because they were broken apart. I spent an evening gluing them back together but they're not out marching about. Even some similar Royal Marines standing still and playing, but they're sort of fragile so they're not out and about.
I ran across some metal British Guardsmen similar to the Marine drum and bugle corps figures and marching soldiers.
When searching for Marine bandsmen, I would also run across some more British Royal Marines. How could I resist?
Browsing through ebay listings for Royal Marines I ran across an unusual set of Royal Marines that was really interesting but really expensive, as it was a limited edition with numbered sets. Unusual uniforms, with bandsmen and soldiers marching with flags. I didn't think it was worth the money UNTIL I ran across a set which had some damaged soldiers (a broken foot, a missing base easily replaced) which was a fraction of the normal price. Picked that group up recently, including a nice box and small pamphlet, and fixed the broken pieces.
A true sign of an addict is search for a different high. The soldiers below of the Cheshire regiment intrigued me, so I got them too.
All these guys are to varying extents collectors items. Folks will pay up to 10 to 15 bucks for single soldier on ebay. All told I think they'd all go for at least 700 bucks, maybe more (I probably paid a total of 150 for them all). I swear I'm done now.
Yeah, right.
A true sign of an addict is search for a different high. The soldiers below of the Cheshire regiment intrigued me, so I got them too.
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